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Politics : Piffer Thread on Political Rantings and Ravings -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (13136)	5/12/2004 4:24:36 PM
From: Augustus Gloop	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14610

What we did was wrong. The difference is nobody has the balls to stand up on behalf of Islamic nations and tell them how equally (if not more) F**ked they are! New gloop policy - for every hostage killed we cut off a pow's sprinkler

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (13136)	5/12/2004 4:45:41 PM
From: Jorj X Mckie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14610

I just sent this in a PM to someone, posting it here to make sure my views on the topic are clear I don't disagree with anything you said. Some humiliation is nothing compared to a torturous brutal killing. I don't put the events in the same category even in the remotest way. Our soldiers fucked up badly, but it wasn't meant as a terroristic act. What our soldiers did was wrong, they should be punished. What the terrorists did was barbaric and they need to be eliminated. Where the parallels are for me is in the treatment by the media. We are more than happy to examine our errors, but what our soldiers did is being played out nonstop over several days. Nick Berg's execution is almost a footnote. I haven't seen it on the news at all today. One fucking day and as a secondary story to the iraqi prison story? What the fuck is wrong with us? Why aren't we screaming for blood instead of emphasizing that it was in retaliation?...there is a huge part of our population that needs to grow balls.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (13136)	5/12/2004 7:04:44 PM
From: MulhollandDrive	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14610

if we have the "right to know" over and over and over again the images of the abuses at abu ghraib, then we have the right to know of the atrocity depicted in the images of the mutilation deaths of the 4 contractors and of nick berg townhall.com Our media, in damage overdrive Brent Bozell (archive) May 12, 2004 \| Print \| Send Everyone with a civilized bone in his or her body thinks the prisoner abuse is unwarranted, unacceptable and in our most idealistic moments, un-American. There, I said it. Now let me say this: The arrival of the Iraqi prisoner abuse story shows what Jim Wright once called "mindless cannibalism" can overtake the media's war reporting. While reporters murmur about the White House trying to do "damage control," they do not describe their own activity, best defined as "damage overdrive." There is nothing sicker than to see the Katies and Matts clucking about how these pictures will do us great damage around the world -- and can we show them to you again, for the 57th time, for the 14th straight day? The media's concern for America's image is no match for their power lust to rid Washington of Donald Rumsfeld, and -- they dream -- eventually President Bush as well. Does America have the "right to know," to see every image of smiling American morons at Abu Ghraib? To see every image of the horrors of the war? Contrary to what they might say on the chat-show circuit, the media themselves do not have an absolute position on that. Look no further than March 31, when a vicious mob shot four American contractors, mutilated them, burned their corpses, dragged them through the streets and hung body parts from bridges. Like the prisoner-abuse story, this was the ugliness, the horror of war. But in this case, most in the media determined the public did not have a right to see the pictures. Notice the great irony behind the Abu Ghraib pictures. Because they are less graphic and disturbing, since the prisoners are being humiliated, and not killed, they are more acceptable for airing, and then more acceptable for complete over-airing. The end result is that Americans are inundated with visuals of injustices committed by Americans, and lost is the reality of far graver and more frequent atrocities committed against Americans. Reality gives way to the perception of reality, all in the name of "news." Now the media elite are showing us the most remembered gloomy images of Vietnam, the war America lost when Americans lost heart. By putting those Iraq pictures next to these, the media are vying for similar results. If not, why make all the comparisons? Why are our media taking sexual humiliation and comparing it to the Kent State shootings, or more outrageously, the mass murder at My Lai? Do they have no ability to distinguish between these, or do the ends justify the means, with one image just as good as the next one? Our networks are good at broadcasting how we have stoked the outrage of the Arab world. But those same networks never used the butchering of our contractors in Fallujah to discuss how the Arab world has stoked our outrage. Our enemies get no media investigations, no media scrutiny. Our carping critics in the "world community" -- from the Europeans with their buddy-buddy Baathist relationships to the corruption-plagued United Nations -- get no media investigations, no media scrutiny. There is no feeding frenzy on anyone who has opposed the Iraq war. They are all immune. We are the only failures. We are the only ones worth criticizing. Even our enemies get more credit for effectiveness than we do. On the night of the contractor-killing, NBC anchor Tom Brokaw on three occasions used the words "barbaric" or "barbarism" to describe the event. But he also mentioned "the sophisticated and effective hit-and-run tactics of the insurgents" and described the attacks as "a classic example of asymmetrical warfare, which has been so effective for the insurgents." CBS used the Fallujah attacks on contractors for a more desperate political ploy: to portray Bush's economy as sinking. Dan Rather asked: "What drives American civilians to risk death in Iraq? In this economy, it may be, for some, the only job they can find." But the Fallujah attacks were a two-day story at best, quickly abandoned for a fraudulent story of a Wisconsin girl who claimed to be abducted because she knew the TV networks would take the bait. And now the networks are back on Iraq, babbling endlessly, passing moral judgment, touting their own moral authority. They have none. They tout the "right to know" as they exploit the right to sensationalize and propagandize. In return, we get the right to lose the war. Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com member group.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (13136)	5/13/2004 11:48:50 AM
From: Alan Smithee	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14610

You are stronger than I. I have seen the still pictures of the guy holding the severed head. Thus far, I haven't had the stomach to watch the video. It's an appalling act of terrorism, and I'm greatly offended that most politicians and the US media fail to express the outrage over this incident that we see over the prison abuses.

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (13136)	5/13/2004 3:08:20 PM
From: Junkyardawg	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14610

Someone sent me the video via email. I turned it on and in less than 2 seconds I turned it off. I heard screams like I have never heard in my life and I immediatly turned off the video. Consider this...I didn't stick around long enough to see anything and all I heard was screams and I could not sleep last night. I think those screams will haunt me for the rest of my life. If they had killed him with an Axe or something maybe just maybe the horror wouldn't have been...what am I trying to say...anyway, the way they did it, slowly with a knife, was more than I could stand. Never in my life have I seen evil. This was the first time this soul has witness the true face of evil itself. dawg